That Hump is a Burger

It's Wednesday, or Hump Day as the kids like to call it, which can only mean one thing, B&E readers! It's Burger Day!

(That's right, it's the only thing Wednesday can mean.)

My Wednesday is thus far meatless, but my media is carnivorous as ever. I'm not talking about the "red meat" of attacking one's political opponents, although that's surely happening somewhere, too. No, indeed, I'm talking about actual red meat in the media.

First of all, this fine feature in the New York Times, which some of you may have heard of. Click on a burger to see a bit of info about it and hear a little audio review. Donovan's Pub (home of the #2 ranked burger on this list) is just up the road from my apartment in Queens, and I can vouch for that particular burger's tastiness. The missus calls it greasy; I call it juicy. Tomato, tomato. Hm... That comparison doesn't work at all in writing.

Looks like our President also appreciates a burger, and when he and Vice President Biden had a hankering, they headed over to the strip mall home of Ray's Hell Burger in DC.

If you watch the video, you may catch that President Obama orders his burger medium-well. What the hell is that all about? I grew up in the red meat belt, and you just don't order a burger medium-well. Medium is OK; medium-rare is better. If the beef's really good, take it rare. It's gotta be at least a little pink. This is one time when pink doesn't equal gay.

(Speaking of gay, shout-out to Maine!)

Anyway, medium-well... That's not beef I can believe in, Mr. President.

With my share of complaints (of course), I'm much more in sync with the views and positions of this President over the last one, certainly. But this really takes the cake. Medium-well? Oh, Mr. President, how could you?

You might as well order a hockey puck on a roll and call yourself Canadian.

Christmas Is to Blame

They look like us, they speak like us, but Canada’s like a foreign country up there.

I can’t say I understand exactly what he did, but Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper of the Conservative Party has managed to piss off the rest of the opposition political parties so much that three of them have gotten together to form a coalition for, like, the first time ever (including those wacky secessionists), and they were on their way to ousting Harper from office.

So Harper did what all good leaders do, and made it impossible for them to call their no-confidence vote. He got the Governor General, an unelected official — appointed in fact by Queen Elizabeth (they’re so cute up north, honoring the Queen and all) — to give Harper permission to shut down the Parliament until January.

(Apparently, the Canadian left feels about Harper the way the American left feels about Bush, Cheney, or Rove, all rolled into one diabolical figure.)

But I think I know why all this is going on. All told, especially in comparison to just how much landmass they’ve got up there, the population of Canada is quite small.

It’s also Christmas tree season and, as we all know, the Canadians head south to our cities — especially New York and Boston — to make their annual incomes by selling tiny, dead pine trees at an enormous profit to Christians (and some curious secular Jews who celebrate Christmas — a phenomenon I’d never seen before living in New York) preparing for the holiday season.

With the population gone and no one left to hold the government employees accountable, all hell is breaking loose.

We need to hurry up and get through these holidays, so that the Canadians can go back to their country before it’s another country altogether.